The compound word **抢先** is formed through the combination of two meaningful characters: **抢** (qiǎng), which means "to seize," "to grab," or "to rush," and **先** (xiān), which means "first," "ahead," or "before." When combined, the literal sense is "to seize the first [position]" or "to rush to be ahead." This structure follows a common verb-complement pattern in Chinese, where the first character denotes the action and the second describes its directional or resultant goal. Thus, **抢先** semantically evolves to mean "to preempt," "to act before others," or "to strive to be the first," capturing the concept of proactively taking an initiative to gain an advantage in a competitive or time-sensitive situation.